Heating with powder and plastic wastes

Since disposing waste – whether coating powder or fine metallic filings or shavings – is expensive, in future a combustor for powdery residues will enable companies to cut disposal and heating costs at the same time.

A great deal of powder is needed to coat auto parts and other objects – with a great deal of waste left over later, since only a fraction of the coating ends up on an autobody, while the rest that misses the target ends up in a waste suction chamber.

Recycling of residual powder has limits; if coaters mix in too much ''recycled'' powder, the quality of a coating suffers. Companies therefore have to dispose-off most of the coating powder – an expensive proposition. Grinding processes are similar; while they also produce many residues that companies have to spend to dispose.

In the future, industrial plants will be able to cut such disposal costs as well as heating costs for facilities, kilns and many other high-temperature processes. This is made possible by a plant, which researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg developed in cooperation with an industry partner.

''The plant we developed enables us to recover heat from any combustible, powdery industry waste, whether it is coating powders, polymer powders or even wood constituents,'' says Marcus Kögler, in charge of the project at the Fraunhofer IFF.

''The potential savings are large - 25 per cent of the natural gas usually used for heating and, additionally, 100 per cent of the disposal costs are being saved at a reference facility. A plant with a larger capacity can even produce electricity that can be supplied to the electrical grid."